28 September 2015

Here's just a very
quick meal, gnocchi with tomatoes, pine nuts, basil and mozzarella
quickly tossed together in a pan and served with garlic bread. I love
this kind of quick meals when there isn't much time or strength to
cook. I don't know why, but I'm extremely drained today. I could have
fallen asleep while walking several times today. I'm not quite with
it today, but let's hope it's only a severe case of Monday blues and
I will be a bit more energetic tomorrow. I can't even write more
right now, better luck tomorrow. I'll soon be off to bed.

27 September 2015

Veggie sausage
rolls are a good snack or lunch to brighten up a regular day. These
are very easy to make, especially, if you buy the ready rolled out
puff pastry like I often do. We took these veggie sausage rolls as
snacks for a forest walk, and they were just perfect for that
purpose, filling and easy to transport. The only problem was that a slightly unfriendly bull tried to attack us and we had to escape through the forest into safety to the next gate. I'm not sure, if it was just so fond of us due to our sausage rolls...

Anyway, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

320 g puff pastry

6 vegetarian
sausages

Vegetable oil

Smoky firepit rub

6 Emmental slices

1 egg

Sesame seeds

Method

Cook the sausages
in vegetable oil and rub them with the smoky firepit rub and let them
cool.

Roll the puff
pastry out and cut it into 6 equal sized bits.

Cut slices of the
cheese.

Wrap the puff
pastry pieces around the sausages and cheese slices.

Brush the pastry
with the beaten egg and sprinkle sesame seeds on the top.

26 September 2015

It's apple season
and perfect time to enjoy some lovely apples. I was explicitly
looking for a nutty apple pie recipe and found this one on a
website of a Finnish magazine. I followed it pretty closely, but here is the
translation. It was nice and moist and full of apples.

For the crust:

1 dl oat flakes

2 dl wheat flour

1 tsp baking
powder

1 dl sugar

½ dl hazelnut
crush

1 tsp vanilla
sugar

75 g margarine

2 eggs

1 ½ dl Greek
yogurt

For the filling:

4 British pink
apples

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1 ½ tbsp hazelnut
crush

Method:

Grease a pie tin
(about 25 cm diameter).

Melt the
margarine.

Mix the dry
ingredients for the crust and add the other ingredients into the mix
and make a smooth dough.

Spread the dough
into the pie tin.

Wash the apples
and cut them into thin slices or wedges. Place them onto
the dough.

Melt the butter
and add the sugar and cinnamon to it. Pour the mix onto the apples

24 September 2015

Time for a solid
weekday cooking with ingredients I happened to had and had to cook in
order not to waste them. Cooking is a creative process and I also
hate to throw vegetables out, so I always try to utilise everything
and make up dishes, if need be. It's a good thing to do especially
before the weekend, as there will probably be some eating out or
fancier dishes then. I had these great fresh garden peas in the pods
and thought they would be a good ingredient for a vegan rice pilaf
type of a dish. So then I created this pea and carrot pilaf.

I'm
sharing this recipe with Shaheen's vegetarian cooking challenge Eat Your Greensfor this month. She
is a fellow vegetarian blogger and has a wonderful blog called A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. Do
check it out, if you don't know it yet! I realised that September is
drawing to a close (!) and that I should quickly post a greenish dish
to participate. So here's my pilaf recipe, have a look how I made it.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh garden
peas

1 romano pepper

2 carrots

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

200 g rice (mix of
brown basmati, red camargue and wild rice)

2 tbsp vegetable
stock powder

Ground cumin

Thyme

Salt

Ground black
pepper

Method

Remove the peas
from the pods.

Chop the romano
pepper, carrots, onion and garlic finely and start cooking them in
olive oil.

After a while, add
the rice and peas followed by vegetable stock powder and water to
cover it all.

22 September 2015

I really love tacos with various vegetable fillings, so I made some
again. I filled these taco shells with roasted pattypan squash, soya
mince chilli and cheese. I also got the opportunity to taste my new
smoky chilli paste with them, Gran Luchito, which was really
good. That little jar is going to disappear in no time.

Here is my taco recipe:

Ingredients

1 pattypan squash

Olive oil

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic

1 can black beans

400 g tomatoes

Ground cumin

Ground coriander

Chilli flakes

Smoked paprika

Cocoa powder

Tomato purée

Fresh coriander

100 g grated cheese

½ cup dried soya mince

12 taco shells

Method

Cut the pattypan squash into cubes, brush them with olive oil and
roast in the oven until done with roasting marks.

Chop the onion, garlic and tomatoes. Cook the onion and garlic in
olive oil until soft, add the black beans and ground cumin, ground
coriander, chilli flakes and smoked paprika. Stir for a couple of
minutes and then add the tomatoes. Let simmer under lid for about 30
minutes. Add the cocoa powder, tomato purée and a little bit of the
grated cheese into the pot.

Cook the dried soya mince as instructed on the packet. Mine needs to
be boiled in water for a couple of minutes and then it can be pan
fried. Add the mince after the frying into the chilli.

Also add the roasted pattypan squash cubes into the chilli, or keep
them separated, if preferred.

Put the mixture into the taco shells, add some cheese and fresh
coriander on the top and bake in the oven until the cheese has
melted.

21 September 2015

Autumn cooking can be so great, as I
noticed again tonight. How have I missed the hearty potato mash
topped pies! It's not really cold enough yet for proper winter
dishes, but since it's late September, I find that a few pies can be
made. So I found that a root vegetable pie was in order for a Monday
dinner.

I want to share this recipe with this
month's Vegetable Palette vegetarian cooking challenge hosted
by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table,
which is very much the inspiration for this recipe anyway. Vegetable
Palette's theme for September is “purple and blues” and this very
much caught my imagination. During the whole month I was considering
so many options for purple or blue recipes by using different
vegetables and it was getting difficult to decide. I just didn't
necessarily want to resort to blueberries, which I would've done, if
no other good idea would've come along. Luckily I found these purple
carrots and purple garlic, which somehow wanted to go into hearty
pie, and I paired them with some golden beetroots and also fairly
purple red onion. It's probably my twisted sense of humour that
instead of the naturally purple beetroot, I used its golden cousin.
Well, it did work well together. This recipe is also very easy to
veganise, I just preferred using butter and cheese in the mash.

Here is the recipe for my purple
root vegetable pie:

For the filling:

100 g purple carrots

4 golden beetroots

1/3 cup puy lentils

1 large red onion

3 purple garlic cloves

Olive oil

A dash of dry cider (I used organic
Black Fox cider)

1-2 tbsp vegetable stock powder

Sage

Thyme

Salt

Ground black pepper

For the topping:

500 g potatoes

2 tbsp butter or margarine

1 tsp salt

50 g grated Emmental (optional)

Method:

Cook the potatoes in salt water until
they are done. Drain most of the water off, but leave a little bit of
it in the pan, add the butter, salt and cheese and mash. Set to side.

Peel the root vegetables and cut them
into cubes. Chop the red onion fairly coarsely and the garlic finely
and start cooking these in olive oil. After a few minutes, add the
root vegetables. After again a few minutes, add a dash of cider and
vegetable stock powder and let simmer. Add a little bit water, if
needed.

In the meanwhile cook the lentils in
water in a separate pot.

Once the vegetables are almost done,
add the lentils and seasoning. Let simmer for a while until the
flavours have blended nicely, season to taste.

Put the root vegetable and lentil mix
onto the bottom of an oven dish and spread the mash on it as cover.
Make any patterns on the top, as you desire and bake in the oven at
200C for about 25 minutes until the mash is baked golden brown.

Enjoy the pie warm on a cosy autumn
night. I'm also looking forward to having it tomorrow as lunch.

20 September 2015

A tomato and
lentil soup is a cheap and easy, yet fine alternative for the autumn.
It tastes equally nice in the evenings and as lunch and is incredibly
filling. I love this type of food in the autumn and winter time.

Here is my basic
recipe for a vegan tomato and red lentil soup.

Ingredients

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

400 g cherry
tomatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

½ cup red lentils

1 vegetable stock
cube

2 tbsp tomato
purée

Fresh basil

Salt

Ground black
pepper

Chilli flakes

Method

Chop the onion and
garlic finely, and also chop the tomatoes. Start cooking the onion
and garlic in olive oil, and once they are soft, add the tomatoes.
Simmer under lid by occasionally stirring.

Cook the lentils
in water in a separate pan with an added vegetable stock cube until
they are done. Add them to the tomatoes and season the soup with
tomato purée, fresh basil, salt, ground black pepper and chilli
flakes to taste.

19 September 2015

Is there a better
way to start a day than with freshly baked healthy rolls? I think
not! I made these lovely rolls, but didn't write down the ingredient
amounts. I'm very sorry about that, but they were so good that I'm
going to bake them soon again and then post the full recipe here.

The main ingredients of the dough were
spelt flour, in dry cider soaked oat flakes and sunflower seeds. This
mix made very sturdy and filling rolls. They were so great with some
butter and cheese.

17 September 2015

I haven't just
been tasting whiskys (previous post), I've also had a taste of
healthy life with lunches such as this assembly of kohlrabi and
carrot sticks. I love all sorts of vegetable sticks enjoyed with
homemade hummus. Onto this plate I also added some homegrown
tomatoes. Do you often enjoy such light lunches? I should definitely
do it more often.

Somehow I never
seem to get kohlrabi in this country. What's up with that? So now
that I saw these beautiful specimen in my local health food store, I
just had to grab a few. I hope they'll have them for a while yet,
because I really got into the taste again. I prefer them eaten raw
with a dip, that is just divine.

Do you still
remember Teerenpeli from a recent post of mine, a
Finnish restaurant chain with proud range of own beers, ciders and
whiskies? Back then I promised to write something more on their
products. Now I feel that the suitable time has arrived to write
about their single malt whisky, as the days are growing bleaker and
the nights darker. Also the weekend is soon here - good times!

I have been very
much into whisky lately, which quite surprises me, and I was happy to
have some of this Teerenpeli product left. So here are my thoughts on
the Teerenpeli Single Malt Whisky 43 %. It's a 8 years old whisky and
quite smooth in general. There is a slight smoke flavour in the
foretaste. The aftertaste contains sweeter components, such as
vanilla and caramel. Finally there is a really strong earthy taste in
the aftertaste, pretty much like tar. I know that flavour well, as
Finns often flavour sweets with tar.

14 September 2015

This type of dish is one my absolute weekend favourites: potatoes,
veggies and a vegetarian Schnitzel of some description and I quite
often tend to have such meals. The components can and will vary, but
the principle stays the same. So here's just one of those dishes. I
would urge you to try skin-on mash, there's not a really a reason to
remove the nutritious skins and they add a bit more interesting
texture to the mash.

Skin-on mash

500 g potatoes

25 g butter

50 ml milk

1 tsp salt

Boil the potatoes
in salt water until done. Mash them with the peels and add the
butter, milk and salt.

Mushroom sauce

200 g closed cup
mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

100 ml oat cream

Salt

Pepper

Fresh basil

Slice the
mushrooms ans chop the onion and garlic finely. Cook them in olive
oil until soft and until the mushrooms have lost some of the excess
water. Add the cream, salt, pepper and basil and let simmer until the
cream has been infused nicely by the mushrooms and other components.

Leek side

1 leek

1 onion

25 g butter

50 g dry cider

Salt

Pepper

Slice the leek
thinly and chop the onion finely. Cook them in butter until soft, add
the cider, salt and pepper and let simmer.

13 September 2015

Vibrant Forest Brewery is a microbrewery in New Forest and yesterday they
organised this Vibrant Forest Beer Festival that I had the pleasure
to visit. I often go to New Forest for walks, as it is nearby. This
time we also had a little stroll through some parts of the forest,
which was very vibrant indeed and we got really lucky with the
weather as well. Here are some photos from the walk and from the beer
festival.

I tasted a variety
of the beers and one cider and they were all excellent and different.
The beer by the Vibrant Forest Brewery is unfined, which makes it
suitable for vegans and vegetarians. The beers are therefore cloudy,
but very fine in taste. I also bought some bottles to take away and
will be enjoying them home.

Who is The VegHog?

A vegetarian hobby cook and urban gardener born in Finland, currently living in Denmark. I try to develop my cooking skills by making a wide variety of veggie dishes, some of them traditional and some new creations. My favourites include veggie burgers, squashes, organic and local produce, cider, spelt, rye, pizzas, pasta dishes, risottos and sea-buckthorn.
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